Tour de France tournament analysis

Analysis of Tour de France results from years 1952-2016

Intoduction

Table 1: The first six observations of the collected data

Year	Average pace(km/h) of winner	Total distance(km)	Number of stages	Finished the race	Number of entries	Nationality of winner	Team of winner	Initial city	Initial country
1952	32.23	4898	23	78	122	Italy	Italy	Brest	France
1953	34.59	4476	22	76	119	France	France	Strasbourg	France
1954	33.23	4656	23	69	110	France	France	Amsterdam	Netherlands
1955	34.45	4495	22	69	130	France	France	Le Havre	France
1956	36.27	4498	22	88	120	France	Nord-Est-Centre	Reims	France
1957	34.52	4665	22	56	120	France	France	Nantes	France

The presented dataset (Table 1) contains information about the Tour de France cycling event, held between 1952 and 2016. The Tour de France is a multi-stage cycling race usually held in July across France and neighbouring countries. It is part of the World Tour series.

The prestige of this race is linked to its long history (it is now the oldest cycling race), its great tradition and, above all, the scale of its difficulty. A particularly famous moment is the ascent of the L’Alpe d’Huez pass (see Figure 1): length of ascent - 13.8 km; average slope 7.9% (maximum 12%), elevation - 1126 metres.

Figure 1: L’Alpe d’Huez Valley

Analysis of gathered data

Basic descriptive statistics

Table 2: Basic statistical functions for a given set

Variable	min	max	median	mean
Average pace(km/h) of winner	32.23	41.65	37.32	37.50
Total distance(km)	3282.00	4898.00	3946.00	3,928.07
Finished the race	53.00	174.00	117.00	114.81
Number of entries	100.00	210.00	170.00	160.94

The analysis of a given topic should start with basic information about this set, which already allows us to notice the first correlations or observations (see Table 2). For example, in the columns for median and mean, we can see how small the deviations are between the two measures.

Starting towns of the Tour de France

Table 3: Countries where Tour de France started

Initial country	Sum
France	47
Netherlands	6
Belgium	3
Germany	3
Switzerland	1
Luxembourg	1
Spain	1
Ireland	1
United Kingdom	2

As you can see from the chart (see Table 3), it cannot be assumed that the race always starts in France. This can be seen even better in the map below (see Figure 2). It shows how geographically diversed the tournament is.

Figure 2: Initial cities on the map of Europe

Who rode best?

The table below (see Table 4) helps to answer the above question. It allows us to see that it was the Irish (!) who drove the most on average, while the highest speeds were achieved by the British.

Table 4: Results of the winning nations

Results
Nationality of winner	Average distance	Average pace
Italy	37.20	4,156.40
France	35.94	4,214.30
Luxembourg	38.26	3,980.45
Spain	38.57	3,769.34
Netherlands	34.35	4,219.00
Belgium	35.73	3,989.83
USA	37.59	3,624.00
Ireland Irish	36.65	4,231.00
Denmark	39.23	3,907.00
Germany	39.23	3,950.00
Australia	39.79	3,430.00
United Kingdom	39.92	3,448.68
Osiągi zwycięskich narodowości

The distribution of average distance to average speed is visualised in the plot below (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Visualisation of the performance of the individual winning nations

However, several observations were omitted from the above analysis. These are the rows containing NA (unspecified) values found, for example, in the Narodowość zwycięzcy column.

Year	Average pace(km/h) of winner	Total distance(km)	Number of stages	Finished the race	Number of entries	Nationality of winner	Team of winner	Initial city	Initial country
1999	40.27	3686.0	20	141	180	NA	NA	Le Puy de Fou	France
2000	39.56	3662.0	21	128	180	NA	NA	Futuroscope	France
2001	40.02	3446.0	20	144	189	NA	NA	Dunkirk	France
2002	39.93	3282.0	20	153	189	NA	NA	Luxembourg	France
2003	40.94	3427.0	20	147	189	NA	NA	Paris	France
2004	40.55	3391.1	20	147	188	NA	NA	Liege	Belgium
2005	41.65	3608.0	21	155	189	NA	NA	Fromentine	France

We are referring to the historic events of the Tour de France between 1999 and 2005, when Lance Armstrong, American road cyclist, Olympian and ‘author’ of one of the biggest doping scandals in sports history, triumphed on the podium seven times. On 24 August 2012, he was retrospectively banned from competition from 1 August 1998 and disqualified from professional cycling for life for using prohibited boosters.

Team of winner	Nationality of winner	Average distance	Average pace
	Lance Armstrong	3,500.3	40.42

The table above shows Armstrong’s average performance. It is worth comparing his average speed with the fastest nation at the tournament - the British. The difference is (km/h):

[1] NaN

The American, thanks to doping , he rode on average the fastest in the entire tournament in the years under discussion.

Ratio of those enrolled to those who completed the competition

The Percent column in the graph below expresses the percentage ratio of the variable Number of entries to Finished the race in the years in question. From the table below we do not notice any particular correlation between the years and the relationship in question.

Year	Percentage
(2010,2016]	84
(2003,2010]	80
(1984,1990]	72
(1997,2003]	72
(1965,1971]	70
(1978,1984]	70
(1990,1997]	69
(1971,1978]	66
(1952,1958]	61
(1958,1965]	59

Number of stages vs. total distance

The graphic below shows the ratio of the variable Number of stages to the variable Total distance(km) by country where the race has started at least twice. From the graph we can read the obvious relationship - the more stages, the longer the race.

Figure 4: Number of stages vs. Total distance